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Bregazzi, H. , & Jackson, M. (2018). Agonism, critical political geography, and the new geographies of peace. Progress in Human Geography, 42(1), 72-91. https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132516666687 Peer reviewed version Link to published version (if available): 10.1177/0309132516666687 Link to publication record in Explore Bristol Research PDF-document This is the final published version of the article (version of record). It first appeared online via Sage at DOI: 10.1177/0309132516666687. Please refer to any applicable terms of use of the publisher. University of Bristol - Explore Bristol Research General rights This document is made available in accordance with publisher policies. Please cite only the published version using the reference above. Full terms of use are available: http://www.bristol.ac.uk/red/research-policy/pure/user-guides/ebr-terms/ Progress in Human Geography Agonism, critical political geograph y, and the new geographies of peace Journal:For Progress Peer in Human Geography Review Manuscript ID PiHG-2015-0108.R2 Manuscript Type: Submitted Paper Keywords: Peace, Agonism, Geopolitics, Ontology, Violence, Critique Why does critical political geography struggle to address, and research, peace? Recent efforts in geography do seek positive accounts of peace, but we argue that critical geographies remain problematically reliant on social agonism. Dominant theoretical lenses used to address critical politics reproduce dissension as the causal grammar of critical sociality and the Abstract: constitutive effect of difference. We seek an alternative account of peace and sociality. The first half of the paper diagnoses how prevailing conceptual approaches to critique privilege agonism. The second half advances a positive account of peace, without losing the critical tenor of post-foundationalist or relational political insights. http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/pihg Page 1 of 38 Progress in Human Geography 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Agonism, critical political geography, and the new geographies of peace 9 10 11 Abstract 12 13 14 Why does critical political geography struggle to address, and research, peace? Recent efforts in 15 16 geography do seek positive accounts of peace, but we argue that critical geographies remain 17 18 problematically reliantFor on social agonism.Peer Dominant Review theoretical lenses used to address critical politics 19 20 reproduce dissension as the causal grammar of critical sociality and the constitutive effect of difference. 21 22 We seek an alternative account of peace and sociality. The first half of the paper diagnoses how 23 24 prevailing conceptual approaches to critique privilege agonism. The second half advances a positive 25 account of peace, without losing the critical tenor of post-foundationalist or relational political insights. 26 27 Keywords : Agonism, critique, geopolitics, ontology, peace, violence 28 29 30 31 If self is a location, so is love: 32 33 Bearings taken, markings, cardinal points, 34 35 Options, obstinacies, dug heels and distance, 36 37 Here and there and now and then, a stance. 38 39 Seamus Heaney (2006), ‘The Aerodrome’ 40 41 42 43 44 A I. Introduction 45 46 Social agonism is the stock in trade of critical geography, and, particularly, of critical political 47 48 geographies. Agonism (from the Greek agon , meaning painful struggle, conflict and competition, 49 50 dispute, or a stage in the process of dying - OED ) is seen to constitute sociality, and, in particular, politics 51 52 as inherently and unavoidably conflictual; ‘agonists assert the irreducible quality of conflict for the 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 1 http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/pihg Progress in Human Geography Page 2 of 38 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 political’ (Hirsch, 2012: 4). Further, agonism underpins the epistemic rationale and ethical justification 9 10 for critique. The focus may be global, as in the political study of nuclear, terrorist, or climate risks; or 11 12 internationalist, as in the study of uneven state development and the neoliberalisation of global 13 14 economic life. Or it may simply be, regardless of scale or flow, the theoretical or empirical basis for 15 16 understanding social difference and historical change. For an agonistic approach to sociality and politics, 17 18 being critical is aboutFor attending Peer to those persiste Reviewnt potentials for conflict, to those ‘moments of 19 20 violence…always present in our assumptions of peace’ (Darling, 2014: 244). Such an ethos of critique 21 22 defines the human capacity for thought and autonomy against unwarranted religious or political 23 24 authority (Gasché, 2007). Agonism’s attention to implicit threats to autonomy, thus, dominates critical 25 26 research agendas and teaching curricula. Violence, inequality, dispossession, and exclusion, and 27 28 crucially, the political struggles against them, therefore feature as critical discourse. 29 30 31 One result is that the study of peace, including its grounding concerns like love, compassion, empathy, 32 33 and hope, struggles, relatively speaking, to make the critical political agenda (Nussbaum, 2013). Indeed, 34 35 as Shields and Soeters (2015: 1) argue, ‘mainstream peace research has primarily become an 36 37 examination of war’. We think their claim also echoes within how mainstream critical geography 38 39 approaches peace. For a recent number of geographers (us included), the lack of engagement by critical 40 41 political geography and critical political theory with peace and its ontological correlates is both puzzling 42 43 and unsatisfactory (Inwood and Tyner, 2011; Loyd, 2012; McConnell et al., 2014; Megoran, 2010; 2011; 44 45 Morrison et al., 2013; Williams and McConnell, 2011). We concur with these authors who seek to 46 develop new geographies of peace, that, in response to the dominance of agonistic readings of sociality 47 48 and politics, critical political geography needs to ‘think more expansively and critically about what 49 50 “peace” means and what “geographies of peace” may entail’ (Williams et al., 2014: 1). 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 2 http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/pihg Page 3 of 38 Progress in Human Geography 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 But there is a problem with current efforts to produce ‘positive’ accounts of peace and its correlates. 9 10 This problem is also indicative of why theorising peace repeatedly loses out to the over-whelming 11 12 geographical focus on violence, war, social agonism, and conflict. We argue that there is a deep 13 14 theoretical reason for the lack of engagement with peace in critical geography and critical geopolitics. 15 16 Dominant theoretical apparatuses predominantly employed by critical geographers, particularly critical 17 18 Marxism and variousFor poststructuralisms, Peer construct Reviewthe social, and hence the political, as irreducibly 19 20 spaces of antagonism, violence, or, simply, confrontation. Together these constitute a ‘strong theory’ 21 22 (Gibson-Graham, 2006b: 4; 2014: 148) whose critical commitment to agonism as theoretically necessary 23 24 organises the social as irreducibly conflictual, and pregnant with violence. Concern for theorising and 25 26 negotiating difference mobilises contemporary critical analyses of social life in a manner that reads 27 28 difference as necessarily agonistic, divisive, evental, or violent. As a matter of fact, many political 29 30 theorists argue for an agonistic politics precisely because of the fractured, conflictual nature of social 31 32 relationships (see in particular Connolly, 1995; Honig, 1993; Mouffe, 2005). Mouffe, for instance, argues 33 34 that striving for anything else in politics is an ‘…anti-political vision which refuses to acknowledge the 35 36 antagonistic dimension constitutive of “the political”’ (2005: 2). Agonism, she continues, is ‘ constitutive 37 38 of human societies’ (Mouffe, 2005: 2). The consequence, which we highlight in this paper, is that by 39 40 predicating sociality and ‘the political’ agonistically, we limit the range of conceptual tools necessary for 41 42 theorising peace and its ontological correlates. Positive capacities for theorising critique more generally, 43 44 as something other than attentive suspicion, are also similarly blunted. This paper explores the 45 46 consequences for the idea of peace when politics and sociality are considered only, or unavoidably, as 47 48 spaces of contest or violence. 49 50 It is important to note that struggle (agonism) and harm (violence) are not functional equivalents. Non- 51 52 violent struggles against racial injustice embodied in the work and example of, say, Martin Luther King 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 3 http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/pihg Progress in Human Geography Page 4 of 38 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Jr., are different than the opposition to unjust occupation embodied by the armed struggle of, for 9 10 instance, the Palestinian Liberation Organisation. Both are confrontations, however necessary or 11 12 contested. King wrote in Stride Toward Freedom , that ‘[t]rue pacifism is a confrontation of evil with the 13 14 power of love’ (1958: 80). Love, in this sense, is a political and transformative force (see Lanas and 15 16 Zembylas, 2015). bell hooks writes that, for King, ‘loving practice is not aimed at simply giving an 17 18 individual greater lifeFor satisfaction; Peer it is extolled as theReview primary way we end domination and oppression. 19 20 This important politicization of love is often absent from today's writing’ (hooks 2000: 76; see also 21 22 Inwood 2009; Johnson, 2014). Yet theorising human sociality and politics as constituted necessarily 23 24 antagonistically places the emphasis for politics on confrontation rather than love or peace. One 25 26 consequence for us is the observation that if politics becomes theorised almost exclusively agonistically, 27 28 peace as a constitutive force (or ‘love’ in King’s terms) loses a critical valency. We argue that this is 29 30 especially true in the current context wherein ‘war and violence…have been so compellingly 31 32 deconstructed and critiqued within critical geography in recent years’ (Williams et al.
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